Economic dimensions of the Sino–Soviet alliance and split: introduction to the special issue

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, the Sino–Soviet Alliance of the 1950s and the subsequent split have received increasing attention in research. Most studies, however, focus on (geo)political questions, with the economic side of alliance and split regarded as an appendix. Thus, this special issue turns to the economic dimensions of the Sino–Soviet Alliance and split. The introduction puts the topics of the special issue into the larger context of global post-war economic expansion and the moving international order. It highlights how the contributions to the special issue show that economic dimensions of East–East interactions are misunderstood if seen only through a narrative of failure or as secondary to Cold War geopolitics. Sino–Soviet exchanges were part of global circulations of knowledge, commodities and resources. The economic residues of the Sino–Soviet Alliance lasted longer than the dozen years before the split. The participation of the Eastern European countries in the technology transfer was considerable, as were the repercussions of these transfers on the Eastern European societies. The different economic bureaucracies’ varying reactions to the Sino–Soviet split are also an important point in the contributions. These actors’ rationales went beyond geopolitics, security and autarky, and did include economic considerations, blurring the clarity of a socialist, Stalinist or Soviet development model.